This invention relates to an ammunition cartridge having an electrothermal ignition device for the propellant.
For igniting the propellant powder in known ammunition cartridges having an electrothermal igniting device, in the bottom region of the cartridge a wire conductor is supplied with a current of such an intensity that the wire vaporizes explosively and produces a high-energy arc which, in turn, ignites propellant powder.
It has been found to be disadvantageous in ammunition cartridges of the above-outlined type that by generating the bottom-side arc, first only a relatively small percentage of the propellant powder is ignited and, particularly in case of propellant powders which ignite only with difficulty (LOVA), frequently no reproducible combustion behavior of the propellant powder can be obtained.